The Easter egg hunt at our house was a big success again this year. Filling the plastic eggs with real coins looked like it might be a problem, but the college senior granddaughter showed up just in time late one night.

“Hey, want to help me put money in eggs while we talk?” I asked.

“Sure” was her instant reply.

So we brought the big cardboard box of plastic eggs downstairs and the rolls of coins. I gave her the four rolls of pennies, keeping the hard stuff for myself.

I was just finishing up the roll of quarters when she said, “Okay, the pennies are done, now what?”

“All four rolls?” I asked, thinking she had probably only finished one and still had three to do.

“Yep,” was her positive reply.

“What did you do, put a handful in every egg?”

“No, you said to put one, two or three in each egg.”

She couldn’t be that much faster than I was. After all she was still one of the grandkids, and I had a pink bunny bag of candy ready for her to prove it.

“Well, go back and spread them out a little more.”

So she went back over the penny eggs and reshuffled the coins as we continued our conversation.

As I was halfway through the roll of dimes she informed me, “Okay there’s a penny in each egg. Now what do you want me to do?”

Reluctantly I handed over the roll of nickels which she packed one at a time in the eggs, finishing up shortly before I finished the dimes.

The next day I contacted the houses of the kids I expected to participate in the egg hunt. The teenagers all declined. They’re “too old”. Great! I had 275 eggs ready for 20 kids and only eight wanted to play.

By Easter Sunday they were all ready to run for the eggs. Seems the teens were reminded they had to raise money for something at school. It’s amazing what a motivator money is.

I remember how our kids were fascinated by those chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil they got in their Easter baskets when they were young. Well, they were fascinated until they found out they could only eat them, not spend them.

I also remember that at some point each of them wanted Mom to buy them something I didn’t think they needed. The simplest and most effective explanation was, “Sorry, I don’t have enough money for that.”

Inevitably their first reply was, “Well, just write a check.”

This led to an economics lesson about the necessity of money in the bank before you could write a check.

It seems this has changed. A four-year-old grandson wanted his Mom to buy something she didn’t think he needed, and she gave him the no-money excuse.

He listened, then put his hands on his hips, gave her the well-duh look, and said, “Well, just go sell something on e-bay.”

At age seven, his older brother is saving up all his birthday money this year. This was a notable change, so I asked why he was saving all the money.

His confident reply was, “I’m going to buy the Dollar Tree store.”

When I asked him why, he told me, “They have a whole wall of toys and an aisle of candy.”

“What will you do with the rest of the stuff?” I asked.

“Easy,” he answered, “Sell it and buy another Dollar Tree store.” This kid may not need a lesson in economics.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This column was first published in the Greenville Advocate on April 10, 2002.